These pages are devoted to the Multics operating
system and the hardware it was running on.

When I started studying mathematics at the Universitaet Mainz the most
fascinating institution was the Center for Data
Processing which owned a Honeywell-Bull DPS-8
mainframe running Multics. Since I have been crazy about
large computers since my first contact with a Nixdorf 8870
when I was 14, I had to gain access to this machine - no
matter what I had to do for this.

My friend Ingo and I
decided to subscribe to a one week course entitled
"Introduction to Multics". Since the library of the center
for data processing at our university sold photocopies of
Multics manuals for a few DM each, we had already bought
whatever we could and read through the manuals. So when
the course started, it was pretty boring, since Multics
was such a wonderful and user friendly system - if you
ever were stuck, you had all the necessary information
just at your fingertips - who needs lectures when one can
practice on a new operating system? :-)

As
Ingo was always interested in numerical models of
thermal conduction and things like that, one day he wrote
a small FORTRAN program which calculated the thermal flow
in a steel plate, when suddenly our course advisor had a
look at his screen. Since the class was just learning how
to use the ted editor, it was obvious that he was doing
something totally different, which did not seem as a good
idea when he was asked to leave his terminal and follow to
the offices in the back of the building. After a long time
- as it seemed to me, in reality only a few minutes had
passed - he returned and told me that they suspected that
the only reason for us to enroll to the introductory
course had been to gain access to the Multics machine
(which was right :-) ) and to steal computing time (which
was definitely wrong).

After this accident we had to figure out something new
not to loose access to our newly discovered toy. :-) So we
decided to ask one of my mathematics lecturers if he saw a
way for us to get access to the machine in a more official
way. As it turned out, he was very (!) polite and helpful
and suggested to create a real "project" with only Ingo an
me as participants so we could use the machine on an
official base without having to worry about bureaucratic
administrators and operators.

Since at this time I was constructing a processor (which
eventually led to the NICE
architecture) he setup two project account for us with
the aim to support the processor development. (Thank you!
After so many years, I still think quite often of "my"
Multics machine and all the wonderful nights we spent at
the computer center programming FORTRAN, PASCAL, PL/I,
doing useful and useless, but always interesting things on
this wonderful machine!)

As you can guess, I really fell in love with the Mainz
Multics machine, which can be seen here (from left to
right are SCU, CPU, SCU, CPU and IOM):

After a few months, Ingo and I
asked for holiday jobs helping with the Multics introductory
course (the same one we attended before :-) ) and we got our
HiWi positions. As time went by we got to know more and more
people of the computer center and the people working there
got to know us, since we were there when they left and
sometimes we were there when they came back to work the next
morning. Since we spent every free minute programming on the
Multics mainframe, the started to trust us more and more and
eventually we were allowed to go into the machine room to
have a look at "our" machine, to bring tapes in and out, to
joke around with the operators and to read documentation
where ever possible.

During this time I made some photos of the Multics
machine (I am sorry for the poor quality and will scan the
original images as soon as I have some spare time to do
this):

In 1991 it happened what had to happen, the computer center
decided to shut down the Multics and to scrap it.
Unfortunately the machine was far too large for me to save it
from scrap, since I was still living with my parents and the
only money I had was from teaching students how to use and
program Multics. So I had to see me beloved machine being
shut down and dismantled - and to be honest - it was one of
the most horrible experiences in my life. I never really got
over this and sometimes I am still missing "my" Honey quite
much...